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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Brisbane's biggest auction week of July so far produced exactly the clearance rate of the smaller week before it. Cotality's final results for the week ending 19 July, dated 22 July, show 164 Brisbane homes taken to auction and a clearance rate of 35.4 per cent. A week earlier the city held 130 auctions and finalised at the same 35.4 per cent.
Cotality describes Brisbane as still the weakest of the large auction markets. The number of auctions, though, rose 26.2 per cent in a week.
Cotality final clearance rates for the week ending 19 July 2026 and auction market preview, published 22 July 2026.
The same share of a larger number
An unchanged rate on a larger week means more sales and more unsold homes at once. The tables attached to Cotality's release count 58 Brisbane auctions as cleared and 106 as uncleared. In the week ending 12 July the same table showed 46 cleared and 84 uncleared.
Twelve more Brisbane sellers left their auction week with a sale recorded than in the previous week. Twenty-two more did not.
The two columns need a word of explanation. Cleared, in Cotality's tables, means a sale was recorded for the property in the auction week. Uncleared takes in both the homes passed in when bidding stopped short of the reserve and those withdrawn before the day, so the 106 are not all auctions that ran and failed. The firm reports a rate only where it holds at least ten results, a floor that Brisbane clears easily and the smallest markets do not.
The week also matched its schedule. In its preview of 16 July, Cotality had 164 Brisbane auctions booked for the week, against 154 in the same week of 2025, and 164 is the number it counted as held. That puts Brisbane 6.5 per cent ahead of last July on volume in a week when the combined capitals were behind it.
Related readAugust's five early readings: Brisbane auctions peak, then slideIt is the third final reading for the city this month: 23.5 per cent from 119 auctions in the week ending 5 July, then 35.4 per cent twice. Added together, the three weeks come to 413 auctions and about 132 sales, taking the first week's sales as the 28 that its published rate implies. The rebound from the start of the month has held. It has not continued.
Monday's figure barely moved
The week was unusual in one respect: the early number turned out to be a fair guide. Cotality's preliminary release on Monday 20 July had put Brisbane at 35.9 per cent, calculated on 131 reported results out of 163 auctions, with 47 of them sales. The final figure is half a point lower.
A week earlier the revision had been much larger. The preliminary 43.0 per cent for the week ending 12 July, built on 86 results out of 128 auctions, settled at 35.4 per cent, a drop of 7.6 points. The difference between the two weeks lies in coverage. Four in five Brisbane auctions had reported by Monday this time, against two in three the week before, which left less room for late results to pull the rate down.
Cotality says it collects about 99 per cent of auction results each week on average, and its final tables for Brisbane account for all 164 auctions. Eleven sales and 22 unsold results were added between the Monday and the final count.
The national figure moved more than Brisbane's did. Monday's preliminary rate for the combined capitals was 50.0 per cent, with about a fifth of scheduled auctions withdrawn, and the final rate is 4.7 points under it.
Related readBrisbane posts its best final auction result in three months: 38.5%The coasts fall behind the capital
In the first week of July both coasts cleared a larger share of their auctions than Brisbane did. By the third week that had reversed.
| Market | Auctions | Cleared | Clearance rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brisbane | 164 | 58 | 35.4% |
| Sunshine Coast | 26 | 9 | 34.6% |
| Gold Coast | 52 | 15 | 28.9% |
Cotality finalised clearance rates by city and sub-region, week ending 19 July 2026.
The Sunshine Coast figure rests on only 26 auctions, fewer than half the 60 it held in the week ending 5 July, so a single result is worth almost four percentage points. Its path through the month shows what that does to a rate: 35.0 per cent in the first week, 41.3 per cent in the second, when 19 of 46 auctions cleared, and 34.6 per cent in the third.
The Gold Coast has been lower and steadier. Its 52 auctions left 37 homes uncleared, and its final rate of 28.9 per cent follows 26.4 per cent the week before, when 19 of 72 auctions cleared, and 35.9 per cent in the week ending 5 July. Auction numbers on both coasts have fallen as the month has gone on. Together they held 124 auctions in the first week of July and 78 in the third, while Brisbane went from 119 to 164.
Early and final figures were close on the coasts as well. Monday's preliminary rates were 30.6 per cent for the Gold Coast and 31.6 per cent for the Sunshine Coast, each within three points of where the week finished.
A national step back
The combined capitals clearance rate finalised at 45.3 per cent from 1,367 auctions, down 3.2 percentage points from 48.5 per cent the week before, according to Cotality. The fall came mostly from Sydney and Canberra.
Related readBrisbane's 51.9 per cent early result settles at 35.9 per centCotality final clearance rates, week ending 19 July 2026. Number of auctions in brackets. Perth and Tasmania held too few auctions to compare.
Melbourne was the only capital above 50 per cent. Sydney fell 8.3 points from 50.7 per cent, which had been its best result since May, and Canberra dropped from 51.7 per cent to a rate that put it under Brisbane for the week. Canberra's figure comes from 42 auctions, so it carries the same small-sample caution as the Sunshine Coast's. Adelaide moved the other way, rising to 48.2 per cent from 45.2 per cent on 110 auctions, 26 more than it held the week before.
Brisbane's gap to Melbourne, at 15.2 points, is close to the 14.9 points of a week earlier. Its gap to the combined capitals narrowed, from 13.1 points to 9.9, because the national figure came down to meet it.
What Cotality says is behind it
Cotality's release sets the combined rate of 45.3 per cent against 69.4 per cent in the same week of 2025. It traces the slide over a longer period too, from clearance rates of around 70 per cent in September last year to under 50 per cent in June and July.
The firm attributes the weakness to softer buyer demand amid stretched affordability, the cumulative effect of Reserve Bank interest rate rises, and pressure on household incomes and confidence, which it links to the conflict involving Iran and to policy changes in the Federal Budget. In its release a week earlier it had also observed that auctions were fading in popularity among vendors in a softer demand environment, with national volumes down by roughly 37 per cent since mid-June.
Related readBrisbane's early auction clearance rate climbs back above 40 per centIt also offers a steadier reading. The four-week and eight-week average clearance rates for the combined capitals have settled close together, at 46.2 per cent and 46.5 per cent, which Cotality reads as a sign of stabilising and not of further decline. Brisbane's own three weeks fit that description in a rougher way: a low, a recovery and a hold.
Fewer auctions next week
The larger week does not look like the start of a run. Cotality's preview for the week ending 26 July lists 132 Brisbane auctions, down 19.5 per cent from 164 and the steepest fall among the mid-sized capitals. The firm puts that 29.4 per cent under the level of the same week last year, which would end Brisbane's short spell ahead of 2025 on volume.
Nationally the count goes the other way, with 1,455 capital city auctions scheduled, 6.4 per cent more than this week, led by 680 in Melbourne and 497 in Sydney. That would still be about 15 per cent fewer than the 1,710 auctions Cotality counted in the same week of 2025. Cotality does not expect that to last either. Its outlook has the national schedule dropping to about 1,200 in the week ending 2 August, and it had cautioned a week earlier that a temporary rise in bookings was unlikely to signal better vendor confidence.
For Brisbane sellers, agents and auctioneers, the week ending 19 July is a useful marker. More homes came forward, and bidders bought the same proportion of them. Whether that proportion holds on a smaller week is the question Cotality's next two releases will answer: preliminary figures on Monday 27 July and final ones on Thursday 30 July.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
